Top 60 Shea Ernshaw Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “No thinking, just doing. When you think about things too long, you just talk yourself out of them.”

— Shea Ernshaw

2. “There’re always reasons to stay,” he says. “You just need to find one reason to leave.”

— Shea Ernshaw

3. “Perhaps it’s easier: being alone. Building walls. A solitary life with no one to lose. No one to break your heart.”

— Shea Ernshaw

4. “I once read a poem about love being fragile, as thin as glass and easily broken.”

— Shea Ernshaw

5. “Love is an enchantress – devious and wild. It sneaks up behind you, soft and gentle and quiet, just before it slits your throat.”

— Shea Ernshaw

6. “She’s not weak, she’s not frail or breakable or scared of much. She is the storm that tears away roofs and knocks over trees.”

— Shea Ernshaw

7. “Apparently, love is the worst kind of madness.”

— Shea Ernshaw

8. “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. – Loren Eiseley.”

— Shea Ernshaw

9. “Loving someone is dangerous. It gives you something to lose.”

— Shea Ernshaw

10. “But magic was not always so linear. It was born from odium. From love. From revenge.”

— Shea Ernshaw

11. “There are legends of mermaids who fall in love with sailors, their devotion granting them a human form. I read about the Irish tales of selkies shedding their sealskins, marrying a human man, and staying on land forever.”

— Shea Ernshaw

12. “Because I am more darkness than girl. More winter shadow than August sunlight.”

— Shea Ernshaw

13. “We wait for death. We hold our breath. We know it’s coming, and still we flinch when it claws at our throats and pulls us under.”

— Shea Ernshaw

14. “This town was built on revenge,” I say. “And it’s never made anything better or right.”

— Shea Ernshaw

15. “No one sees that I have just as many wounds as everyone else. That I too am a little broken.”

— Shea Ernshaw

16. “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want the crack inside me to widen, for the ocean of loneliness to creep in. I don’t want to drown.”

— Shea Ernshaw

17. “I might love him. And it has tilted my universe off center, the frayed edges of my life starting to unravel. Loving someone is dangerous. It gives you something to lose.”

— Shea Ernshaw

18. “The woods are wild and rugged and unkind. They cannot be trusted.”

— Shea Ernshaw

19. “Locked doors are better than friends you can’t trust.”

— Shea Ernshaw

20. “A tree all alone may grow hatred in its bark and moth-eaten leaves, but an entire forest can weave malice so deep and well-rooted that no safe passage can be made through such a place.”

— Shea Ernshaw

21. “The sunlight catches his eyes, making the dark green seem like pieces of emerald glass, an entire world contained within them.”

— Shea Ernshaw

22. “I’ll stay on the island, reading fortunes from the smeared remains of tea leaves in white porcelain cups just like my mom used to before Dad vanished and never came back.”

— Shea Ernshaw

23. “Perhaps we all have oddity, some strangeness we keep hidden along our edges, things we see that we can explain things we wish for thing we run from.”

— Shea Ernshaw

24. “The sisters have all found bodies.” The words seem pulled from my throat. The quiet settles between each of my ribs, it expands my lungs, it reminds me of what’s to come. “They’ve all returned.” I close my eyes, focusing on the silence. It’s the fastest it’s ever happened before. Now the drowning will begin.”

— Shea Ernshaw

25. “I thought I wanted to be alone, that I was brave and strong and didn’t need a single thing from anyone. But now I’m not so sure.”

— Shea Ernshaw

26. “It’s like a fairytale suspended in time-the princess forgotten, the hero eaten whole by a noble Fir goblin. The story ended, but no one remembered to burn the haunted forest to the ground.”

— Shea Ernshaw

27. “We’re all just passing ships; no point forming friendships that won’t last.”

— Shea Ernshaw

28. “I’m certain that love can be a wound, deep and saw-toothed and filled with salt. But sometimes it’s worth it.”

— Shea Ernshaw

29. “It starts as a low croon that rolls in with the tide, a sound so faint it might just be the wind blowing through the clapboard shutters, through the portholes of docked fishing boats, and into narrow cracks along sagging doorways. But after the first night, the harmony of voices become undeniable. An enchanting hymn sailing over the water’s surface, cool and soft and alluring. The Swan sisters have awakened.”

— Shea Ernshaw

30. “Tonight’s party is the start of a season that will bring more than just tourist dollars – it will bring folklore and speculation and doubt about the town’s history. But always, every year without fail or falter, it also brings death.”

— Shea Ernshaw

31. “Penance is a long, unforgiving thing. It endures, for without it, the past is forgotten.”

— Shea Ernshaw

32. “We are safe in here, I want to tell her. But that would imply we aren’t safe out there, in the forest, in the mountains, in the dark. But the truth is: I don’t know anymore.”

— Shea Ernshaw

33. “To the readers of this story, if you find yourself in a dark wood, without a match to light the way. Be your own light.”

— Shea Ernshaw

34. “I think that maybe, possibly, he cares about me. But I’m also certain I’ll find a way to ruin it. Just give me time.”

— Shea Ernshaw

35. “I am Sally Skellington, the Pumpkin Queen.” There is warmth in my chest now, heat and fury and anger. “But I was born in Dream Town.” The words feel like their won conjuring, a spell, a ritual or bedtime riddle to cast things into the stars and make them true. I feel suddenly awake and alive, a woman who isn’t simply a rag doll, but a ruler who has traveled to all the realms, even the human world, to set things right. Who feels a spark, a wrath growing inside her.”

— Shea Ernshaw

36. “My eyes are sore from crying, my lungs are sore from coughing, my knees are sore from kneeling, and my heart is sore from believing. If you are sore and tired, then come into these woods and sleep.”

— Shea Ernshaw

37. “But how do you let yourself unravel in front of someone, knowing your armor is the only thing keeping you safe?”

— Shea Ernshaw

38. “They have eternity. Or even if it’s just one life, one long, singular life – that’s enough.”

— Shea Ernshaw

39. “Can the fool of a story also be the hero?”

— Shea Ernshaw

40. “I’d rather sit out here where it’s quiet. Drink my coffee and read a book.”

— Shea Ernshaw

41. “She was a shadow. She was the cruel, howling thing that could be heard during a full moon. She was the monster who crept into other children’s dreams. But this is how monsters are made: from innocent things.”

— Shea Ernshaw

42. “We all leave markers behind – dead or alive – vibrations that trail behind us through all the places we’ve been. And if.”

— Shea Ernshaw

43. “At the crisp, inky hour of midnight, Jack and I are married atop Spiral Hill in the Death Door’s Cemetery. Wind stirs the bone-dry leaves, and Jack takes my soft rag doll hands in his – the coolness of his fingers calming the flutter rippling across my stitched seams.”

— Shea Ernshaw

44. “Maybe this is love, the things we endure for the other, the willingness to face death, to stare it down, and not be afraid.”

— Shea Ernshaw

45. “I wonder if someday Jack and I will have our own pram filled with tiny skeletons and rag dolls. The scuttle of little feet through the house. Skeleton boys tumbling down the spiral stairs; little rag doll girls with their threads coming loose, always needing their fingers and toes stitched back together. A perfectly grim little family.”

— Shea Ernshaw

46. “Because there is nothing quite so wasted as a life unlived. And I intend to live mine.”

— Shea Ernshaw

47. “My mind hisses with overcrowded thoughts, like poison bubbling over-left to simmer too long on a cackling fire.”

— Shea Ernshaw

48. “Perhaps there is no life that makes sense without her: my little sister who has always reminded me of the night sky, endless and beautiful, and chaotic. My sister the universe. My sister the anomaly.”

— Shea Ernshaw

49. “I only want you to be happy.” He says it softly, so only I can hear, then he kisses my palm, soft and sweet.”

— Shea Ernshaw

50. “Even if my seams can be broken, that doesn’t mean I will be.”

— Shea Ernshaw